


when the road goes narrow

by nonbinarywithaknife (littleboxes)



Series: dimension 20 [78]
Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Humor, Backstory, Canon-Typical Violence, Chungling Down (Dimension 20), Crack Relationships, Crack Treated Seriously, Crack and Angst, Food Issues, Gallows Humor, Gen, He/They Pronouns for Alistair Ash, Implied/Referenced Murder, Implied/Referenced Starvation, Implied/Referenced violence against children, Leviathan (Dimension 20), M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pickpockets, Pirates, Poverty, Run-On Sentences, Shipwrecks, Unrequited Love, complicated family relationships, in which landlords die and like is it a crime though?, it's a whole thing with bill and chungledown okay dw about it that's not the point here-, yes i imply that whitclaw has angry gay feelings for bill in one sentence it's not important
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:13:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27797506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleboxes/pseuds/nonbinarywithaknife
Summary: The stories of four pirates, and the ways in which they intertwine.
Relationships: Chungledown Bim & Alistair Ash, Chungledown Bim & Bill Seacaster, Chungledown Bim & Chungledown Bim's Sisters, Chungledown Bim & Others, Chungledown Bim/Bill Seacaster (Unrequited)
Series: dimension 20 [78]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1706107
Comments: 10
Kudos: 10





	when the road goes narrow

**Author's Note:**

> the title is from seamstress by dessa  
> from chungledown bim's wiki page: To "chungle down" is to hole up somewhere, but have fun with it. Like being in the middle of the ocean with a massive storm outside, but you're keeping it light.  
> yes, all three of chungledown bimothy's sisters are named jem. don't worry about it  
> brennan said 'chungledown bim is a feral gnome man who shoves pasta into his coat' and i said oh? sad backstory opportunity?

Back when he is a young gnome and the Pirate King rules loudly and harshly but it’s no more loud and harsh than Leviathan was under the last king, and the king before that, and the king before that; really, the Pirate King’s cruelty and the volume at which it is exercised is the least of most of the population of Leviathan's worries on any given day- anyway. 

Back when Chungledown Bim is Bimothy, youngest of the orphan gnomes from that one nice family down the lane and the only boy, who is being taught by Jem, his older sister (the third youngest of his sisters), the best way to pickpocket people who are taller than him, “because the real silver isn’t down here in Cannon Court, okay Bim? You gotta go upper deck for that, you try an’ pickpocket a Cannon Court gnome you’ll get your wrist broken and we can’t afford that, okay, and remember for practice you go to the Bilge. Now, come on, try again, with more of a flick this time, you need to be _confident_ , and I know you’re more nimble than that, you’re too young for reflexes to have gone to shit…”

Back when Bimothy is somewhere in the realm of seven, still about a decade away from learning that there’s a level of currency more valuable than silver that’s called _gold_ (not to mention all the levels of wealth above that including but not limited to _platinum_ , and the incredibly hoard-able treasures called _jewels_ , all of which collectively are concepts he takes a very long time to wrap his head around, and truly, to this day he isn’t quite sure the sunstruck feeling he feels whenever he thinks about it for too long will ever leave him-) 

Back _then_ , he is very hungry, very often. 

Because the thing is, his eldest sister Jem, who is a proper adult and lucky enough to get a job as an assistant in _Aftward_ , with the details of what exactly being an assistant entails- for example, to whom, and in what endeavor- never becoming clear to him, leaves before the sun comes up every morning to get there and spends all day presumably working very hard at her assisting and gets home long after the sun sets, just to get not enough sleep and start the whole thing again, brings home a handful of silver every week. By a handful, of course, he means three exactly.

She keeps one of those silver pieces to herself, much to the anger (and _boy_ do his sisters get angry, and also very loud) of his other two sisters, but no matter how loud they are about it, his eldest sister refuses to part with that one silver piece, staring down at them and finally shouting back about how hard she’s worked, is working, everything she’s sacrificed, she _deserves this one thing for herself!_ and there’s only so much shouting even his sisters can do before the roof starts shaking in a very ominous way. 

This leaving two silver pieces left and those disappear into the hands of his older sister Jem, who is the second youngest of his sisters, who uses them to pay for the pile of rotting wood and old blankets they call home, that is only a “house” by the housing authority of Leviathan’s standards- an authority which has had to gradually relax said standards until such things as their own- to put it optimistically, hovel- are counted under “house,” because if they ever decided to use something like Solace’s architectural standards, eighty percent of the island would be classified as uninhabitable. 

That being done and all three silver pieces spent, the little family of gnomes from down the lane are quite out of money with which to purchase things like food, and clothes, and that is where Bimothy’s older sister Jem (the third youngest of his sisters), and soon, Bimothy himself, will come in. Because Bimothy’s older sister (the third youngest of his sisters) is the shortest between the three of them, and Bimothy is seven going on eight (or is it eight going on nine?) years old and frankly tiny even for a gnome, and of course seven going on eight or eight going on nine is the best time to learn how to pickpocket. 

So he learns at the hip of Jem (the third youngest of his sisters), because even the meanest pirates don’t notice tiny gnome kids- “we’re too beneath them, literally and metaphorically, hah!” and the nicer- relatively speaking of course- pirates who _do_ notice tiny gnome children are too busy cooing at how _adorable_ and _sad_ they look to notice that same tiny gnome child pilfering their pockets unless that tiny gnome child is “clumsy enough to make a _mistake_ , and the moment that _nice pirate_ notices your hand in their pocket, you best believe it doesn’t matter about your being a big-eyed and tiny gnome child, they’ll whack you hard enough for you to see stars, if you’re _lucky_ , so _don’t get caught_.”

All of this to say, Bimothy grows up very hungry, very tiny, and very good at picking pockets. Especially those of taller people. Of course, as he grows- and it should be mentioned he ‘grows’ for a given definition of the word, because there’s only so much growing to be done for an underfed gnome child from a family that’s known for being tiny even by Cannon Court standards- he learns more than just how to steal from people. 

For example, he learns how to steal from food carts, and how to tuck a handful of loose fruit into his pocket as he runs without destroying it beyond edibility or his coat beyond repair. He steals a sword from an old pirate too frail to chase after him (and so who screams obscenities instead, but Bimothy just laughs) and learns how to swing it; he does it badly, with no one to correct his form, and when he swings it, he does so wildly and with a feral gleam in his eye, but it’s one more thing he had than before, so he keeps it close to his person and swats at anyone who gets too close, and shoves pasta and bread and unidentifiable meat on a stick into his coat and grows, for a given sense of the word. 

Then one day his eldest sister goes off to work and doesn’t come back, and his older sister Jem- the second youngest of his sisters, the one who has the most stress lines on her face that’s only a little bit less tiny than his own because she’s the one who has to get into screaming matches with their landlord every month when rent is due, which come to think of it, is probably why she’s the one who almost always wins the screaming matches between the three of his older sisters- is angry, and then worried, and then she goes into his eldest sister’s room and there’s silence for a little bit and then furious screams the likes of which Bimothy has never heard from her, not even the month when he had to fight off their landlord with his sword that’s really more of a metal stick at this point what with how rusted and blunted it is and even then their eldest sister _still_ wouldn’t part with her last silver piece. His second-oldest sister’s fury is how Bimothy learns his eldest sister has run off with some person in Aftward she was supposed to be assisting all this time and she’s taken all three of her monthly silver pieces with her.

The time between Bimothy learning to associate mentioning Aftward with the sounds of fear-based furious muttering and the mysterious death of the former landlord of their pile of rotting wood and blankets that he frankly refuses to call a home via a blunt and rusted method isn’t anything Bimothy would like very much to remember, let alone repeat to anyone, but the time passes, and Bimothy, in the way that most mortal creatures bound to the passage of linear time do, gets older. He gets older and starts roaming the docks for work, becomes Bim to his friends, gets his first job on a rickety fishing vessel so haphazardly constructed that he and the crew spend half their shifts joking about what treasure they’re going to search for when they’re inevitably thrown to the bottom of the sea.

He makes sure his payment is sent to his sisters, because he’s not like _Aftward-Jem_ , he’s got _priorities_ , and besides, everything he really needs is provided by on the ship. What’s he going to do with an extra silver piece on the sea?

With him out of the house and sending back what he makes, eventually his sisters are able to move. He writes them letters to assure them he’s alive and managing just fine, and they write him letters assuring him they’re alive and managing just fine, and all three of them realize that this is a much better arrangement than before. 

So it goes for many years, enough of them that eventually after drifting from haphazardly constructed pirate vessel to haphazardly constructed pirate vessel, Bim eventually does end up spending about a week on a floating pile of wood with a handful of his crew, dangerously close to actually being off to the bottom of the ocean to look for a blood-red pearl he swears is the stuff of legends, he just can’t remember any of them at the moment- and four out of five of them clinging to the lump of wood are Bimothys as well. 

There’s Bimothy with a capital ‘B’, himself, ‘Moth, and Theey, and of course the only non-Bimothy to make it out, a water genasi named Boulder. 

They while away the time under the sun telling stories, and he spends most of it feeling altogether at home, what with the crowded space and wet discomfort and general lack of food, and he muses to his friends that maybe he’ll pack up the wood and bring it up onto shore and down into Cannon Court once they catch up to Leviathan to fix up his old place, because at least then there’d be a pleasant sea salt sort of smell in the house, and maybe they could finally patch up that hole in the roof and sell it.

They all laugh together, because if ever there was a time to chungle down, now’s the time, and one of the crew of four (the Bimothy everybody knows as ‘Moth, an old blue macaw aarakocra with wings well past the age of handling flight) says so. 

(It _was_ a crew of five, but after day three of desperate clinging and much chungling down on all sides, Boulder finally remembered his being a water genasi, and he’d whooped with joy before letting go of his friends’ salvation and diving down into the blue, and realizing rather too late that he hadn’t inherited the gills.) 

There’s mirth in ‘Moth’s voice as he says it, _if ever there was a time to chungle down, now’s the time_ , and another of the four (the Bimothy everybody knows as known as Theey this time, a dwarf with a beard doubly longer than Bim is tall) says, “to you, Chungledown Bim!” with a half-heartedly raised hand (it’s been a sizable bit, since they’ve last eaten, and everybody’s feeling weak, so it’s perhaps not as lively as she’d like it to be, but it’s the thought that counts) and that’s how the Bimothy everybody knows as Bim becomes Chungledown Bim. 

More years pass and enough of them make their way past Chungledown Bim that the pirate king that raged back when Bim was Bimothy and a tiny, beardless- oh, and that’s another development brought to him by the years, his beard, his pride and joy. It seems that the general hunger and short stature that’s dogged him for so long never managed touch his ability to grow facial hair, and he wears it as a pride and joy. From one mustache to two, to three, he’s up to four and the fifth is growing along just nicely, but anyway- the pirate king dies and there’s a new one on the throne. 

This development doesn’t affect Chungledown Bim all that much, and he’s somewhere in the realm of one-hundred and thirty-two (give or take) when he finds a place in the crew of an up and coming young pirate named Bill Seacaster.

Bill Seacaster is the dictionary definition of a big personality, Chungledown Bim would think, were he aware of the existence of things like dictionaries. (Chungledown Bim, unfortunately, is not aware of the existence of the Compass Points Library, nor of the free library card program.) 

He is loud and boisterous and carries a sword sharper than the wicked gleam in his eyes. Chungledown Bim has served on many ships with many captains, but not one of them was a man he’d ever claim as _his_ captain. Bill Seacaster, on the other hand? Chungledown spends a decade serving aboard the Hangman, fighting alongside Bill Seacaster against enemies of all kinds, and he is proud to call him his captain.

He’s there, when Bill Seacaster takes them inland- only an odd occasion in how seriously Bill takes it, insisting they all follow him, and he leads them not to a pub but to Gibbety Square, where the Pirate King sits on his throne, and Chungledown Bim and the crew of the Hangman are there to witness alongside the rest of Leviathan when Bill Seacaster cuts off the king’s head and declares _no king for a captain!_

Chungledown Bim has never much cared for the pirate king or his throne, but it’s here, in Gibbety Square, at the front of a crowd surging forward for a better view of their king’s mounted head and empty throne, that he feels a freedom he’s only ever felt out on the sea, chungling down with four other Bimothys over a pile of floating scrap.

By the time he meets Alistair Ash, he is the first mate of the Hangman and has been for three years; three years of wide-eyed, crooked-toothed freedom and three years filled with making new and confronting old enemies and a captain named Whitclaw especially, who just keeps _coming back_ , and three years of fighting and chungling down and by now his mouth is filled up with more wood and silver and gold than bone and his beard’s longer than he is tall, but he curls up a new mustache whenever it’s getting in the way of his walking, and he’s long since acquired a sharper and shinier blade than the blunt and rusted one he stole (though it’s still strapped to his back.) He’s taken the wild abandon he used to swing his sword with and sharpened it into actual deadly skill, because Bill Seacaster deserves nothing less in a first mate. 

He meets Alistair Ash when the Tornado, a new addition but a ruthless one, whirls up to him and wind gusts in the direction of the hold. 

It’s in the hold that he finds a skinny red tiefling curled up against a crate, hugging what’s a pile of stale-looking crumbs more than hardtack at this point to his chest. They glare up at Chungledown with a look in their eyes that he recognizes from the mirror, and he sighs.

**Author's Note:**

> don't get too excited about chungledown x bill because chungledown x benjamin x creaky is endgame, i say, as if anyone other than me cares  
> you better believe that 'moth is a he/they, theey is a she/they, and they both have incredibly intricate backstories that we just don't have time to get into right now  
> this work has a playlist that is oops! all dessa songs: [when the road goes narrow](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2A5iZIB8VNBeCAbucNINz6)  
> i'm on tumblr @nonbinarywithaknife


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